FLINT, MICH. — A Muslim rights organization is asking Iran’s top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for a pardon or re-trial for a former U.S. Marine convicted of criminal charges who was accused of working for the CIA.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says in a letter Thursday his organization has met twice with Iranian officials in New York about the case of Amir Hekmati.

Walid made the appeal as the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches.

Hekmati, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen born in Arizona and raised in Michigan, was arrested in August 2011 and sentenced to death for spying. Iran’s Supreme Court annulled the sentence. He later was convicted of “cooperating with hostile governments” and sentenced to 10 years in prison.